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Thai Law Enforcement Cracking Down On "'Job-Stealing' Foreigners"?
Transcript of the above video:
Work authorization here in Thailand, Thai Work Permit is a very important document for all foreign nationals to have if they want to go ahead and earn a living here in Thailand.
I know a lot of folks out there, this can be sort of a frustrating topic or a topic that may cause some consternation amongst people because quite honestly yeah, I get it, people want to be able to just work and they want to be able to live their lives and they don't really want to deal with the frustrations of the bureaucracy of work authorization here in Thailand, but it is a given.
Thais are very protective of their economy and they are quite protective we're, they, we, whatever, I am naturalized but I get it. They're, we, whatever are very, very concerned about protecting or insulating if you will the local labour market. And that even gets into professions as well. Again, there are restricted occupations here in Thailand.
That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Crackdown to curb 'job stealing' foreigners, and then the sort of sub headline if you will: More Chinese and Indians found to be taking positions reserved for Thais, say Officials. Quoting directly: "Deputy Spokesman Karom Phonphonklang said on Thursday that the Department had launched random inspections of workplaces in popular tourist and commercial areas." That bears repeating: "The Department had launched random inspections of workplaces in popular tourist and commercial areas." That's noteworthy. Quoting further: "Across the country after receiving complaints about jobs being taken illegally by foreign nationals. From October 1 to March 18 he said, a total of 25,628 workplaces were inspected, with 820 facing legal action for allowing violations of the Labour Law." I know there are a lot of foreigners out there that say things like "oh the Thai Authorities only care about those who would take jobs from Thais." No, that's not the issue. The issue is only Thais have the unfettered right to work in Thailand. Foreign nationals do not; that's just the nature of it. That is what it is. And look law enforcement will, I hesitate to use the word Crackdown, I prefer to just say law enforcement will be proactive in doing their job to just go ahead and inspect these things.
As we discussed in a video long, long ago, prior to COVID they actually increased the staff within Thai Immigration by orders of magnitude. Then we had COVID and now coming off of it, at the end of the day they have the resources to be very stringent and to be very proactive and to broadly operate in the form of inspections of businesses operated or where foreigners are working here in the Kingdom of Thailand.